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A Happy Answer to a Long Story

By Jennifer

My husband and I have a five-year-old daughter. We’d gotten pregnant with her right away, so after a year of trying with no success, our nurse-midwife suggested OHSU Fertility Specialists and Dr. Paula Amato.

Our case was one of “unexplained secondary infertility.” Neither my nurse-midwife nor the fertility clinic could point to anything that we needed to improve. It would have been easier if there had been something to treat.

After more time had passed, we decided to do IUI treatment. The first month we got pregnant, but had an early miscarriage. We were still optimistic, because that meant we could get pregnant, at least.

We tried IUI a total of six times—and none of them worked. It was deeply troubling. We discussed our situation with Dr. Amato, and came to the conclusion that we were candidates for IVF.

Going through IVF requires serious commitment. It’s hard to be focused on anything else. Shots in the morning and at night, you don’t want to leave home with all your needles and injections. Your hormones are unpredictable. You have so much hope and heightened feelings, both good and bad.

At this point two years of trying to have a baby had passed.

When we did the first cycle of IVF, everything looked great—but it failed. That was a big turning point for us: We decided to give it only one more try. We kept our expectations low. We started to accept that it might not work.

Then we got the call that I was pregnant. With twins. We were stunned—and then thrilled.

Through our process, I felt confident that Dr. Amato, Dr. David Lee and Dr. Phillip Patton were very knowledgeable and up on the latest research. For us, that was a benefit of going to OHSU: Because it’s a research institution, you get the feeling that the doctors have access to the latest technology and research on what works.